In my research on workplace learning and for a book I'm working on about the career impacts of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, I've identified three ways that Canadian policy-makers could promote the long-term employability of current workers.

Help people maintain needed skills

A shift from an "acute care" mindset to a "preventative care" one in employment policy would mean becoming more proactive to help people with jobs maintain or develop the skills they need to remain employable.

An approach based on preventative care would anticipate such changes. It would focus on helping employers and workers prepare for the transition while workers still have jobs - so employers might consider current workers for fundamentally different jobs.

But with a lifetime tax credit of $5,000 and single technical training courses costing upwards of $2,600, the tax credit is inadequate to actual costs for some lines of work, especially technology-focused ones.

Expecting workers with families to interrupt their careers and live on EI might not be a realistic option for some.

Broaden training benefits

Federal policy should encourage employers to provide more training to a wider base of employees - not simply to middle and executive managers.

Spending increased from a mean of $688 per employee in 2010 to $889 in 2017, but when adjusted for inflation, the increase is just $109 per employee. Worse, when adjusted for currency differences, this amount is just over half (52.5 per cent) of what the United States spends per employee ($CAD 1,694).

The same Conference Board research also says that spending increases only benefited senior managers, executives and middle managers, who received more hours of training in 2017 than in 2010. By contrast, supervisors, professionals, trades and non-technical workers - middle- and high-skilled jobs - all saw reductions in training hours.

This doesn't even address training for contingent workers, who aren't technically employees but still need skills to provide their services.

Employer-focused policy should address how much training employers offer, how employers, professional associations or governments recognize the training, and how employers will distribute training equitably.

Policy should also distinguish compliance training that the employer must provide, and training that enhances worker capacity. Ideally, the government would also offer incentives for organizations to provide capacity-building training to their suppliers and contractors.

But workers' behaviour suggests limited commitment to continued learning. In the same Conference Board study, 17.7 per cent of workers invested less than $100 a year in their continued learning and another 23.8 per cent spent between $101 and $250 annually. And, 41.5 per cent of workers spent less than one hour learning per week. That's not all their fault. Some employers actively discourage learning on the job.

Policy should include incentives to participate in both formal and self-study learning, and supports for the latter.

The latter two are often treated interchangeably but are unrelated concepts. The government could help clear up confusion and require accurate labelling of programs. This matters because gaining credentials can offer a cost-effective, quicker route to competence than many traditional degree programs, but only if everyone knows what the credential means.

Although public policy cannot prevent the impact of automation and AI, it could define how changes affect employers and employees alike.